xiv, 345 pages : 24 cm

Publisher description: This lively, wide-ranging cultural history offers an original approach to the subject, as well as new production information and fresh commentary on scores of films, including such classics as Double Indemnity, The Third Man, and Out of the Past, and such "neo noirs" as Chinatown, Pulp Fiction, and Devil in a Blue Dress. Naremore discusses film noir as a term in criticism as an expression of artistic modernism as a symptom of Hollywood censorship and politics in the 1940s as a market strategy as an evolving style as a cinema about races and nationalities and as an idea that circulates across all the information technologies. Interdisciplinary in approach, this book has valuable things to say not only about film and television, but also about modern literature, the fine arts, and popular culture in general. In a field where much of what has been published is superficial and derivative, Naremore's work is certain to be received as a definitive treatment

Includes bibliographical references (pages 309-318) and indexes

The history of an idea -- Modernism and blood melodrama: three case studies -- From dark films to black lists: censorship and politics -- Low is high: budgets and critical discrimination -- Old is new: styles of noir -- The other side of the street -- The noir mediascape

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